I'd like to make an animated video where a bunch of fans, pop culture critics, and entertainment reporters won't talk about anything other than Joss killing people. Trite, hackneyed, old, and really just basically not very creative as a commentary or statement.

I am having so much many tiredness feels and stabby pains in the inflamed ennui bone because of the Joss Wantonly Kills All Of Our Wee Baby Chickens and Mewling Kittens Thingy. #TropeMeBaby #TropeMeHard #TropeMeLikeYouveNeverTropedAnyoneBefore

If Joss kills off a character in the woods and there's no one there to hear it, are they still dead?

"While Whedon jokingly brought every question back to himself, and his inherent awesomeness, there was one query heís sick of discussing: his reputation for being a bloodthirsty author who quenches himself on the corpses of his characters. In response to a fan complaining about the massacre at the end of season five of Angel, he said:

'I honestly am so sick of it. I donít mean to be rude at all, but going on Twitter was not helpful. When you only have 140 characters, thatís all theyíre going to say: You killed Wash. You killed him. You kill people. Heís going to kill everyone. Why do you want to kill everyone? I remember writing a lot of scenes between people that they both lived through. I remember a lot of characters that I brought back to life. And yet, I have a reputation for one thing: Killing.

Iíd love to never hear about it again Ö I know people need to express their disappointment about certain people dying. Look: Go talk to Jordan Levin, who killed the entire show Angel.' "

People are going to stereotype writers just like they do everyone else in the world. It's unfortunate that so many people see Joss as the guy who 'kills people', but it's difficult to completely deny that case either. Especially when he relishes in causing pain to characters in multiple interviews (sarcastic or not- the internet often can't tell the difference).

I wonder what the ratios of dead main characters to size of ensemble and to number of episodes of the series are for other scripted dramas. I would put money on the fact that Joss's is probably very low in comparison to many others. [note to self - check this out some time - or rather, see if anyone else has already done the hard work for you]

Perhaps the main reason he has this reputation is that we actually cared about his characters more than we might have for some others. Though that said, I cared plenty for the characters in, say, the Sopranos where plenty of people died, and don't remember that much of a hate-on for David Chase. On the other hand, I never hated Joss for killing his characters in any way other than "Joss, you magnificent bastard, way to play me like an emotional banjo".

Eh, what they should have mocked is Joss's gall to actually make us first care about the characters who die in his stories. I mean, the NERVE of that guy! Sheesh. It's like a person dying is important or something...